


Never Knew I Could Feel That Much (That's The Way I Loved You)

by notalone91



Series: LoserFest 2021 [4]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Mess, Fighting, M/M, Rushing into things, Stanley Uris Lives, Use Your Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29208999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalone91/pseuds/notalone91
Summary: Richie and Steve are good together.  Or they should be.  So, why does Richie feel nothing?
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Myra Kaspbrak, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: LoserFest 2021 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138544
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Never Knew I Could Feel That Much (That's The Way I Loved You)

**Author's Note:**

> Day 4 - Inspired by a track from Fearless. (The Way I Loved You)

Steve’s great. He is. He’s smart and kind and funny and keeps Richie’s ass in line without being too pushy or overbearing. He can keep up with most of his jokes. Their working relationship is established. Their romance is less so, but it’s getting there. He’s even managed to turn Richie into the guy that opens up the door for him. 

Richie is out for drinks with Mike one night, basically keeping him occupied while Bill works, when it hits him. 

“I’m really happy for you, man,” Mike says, patting his hand. “You seem happier.”

On the surface, he supposes, he’s right. Maybe it’s self-sabotaging, remnants of that little part of his brain that spent more than half of his life saying “Not yet, wait until it’s right. You’ll know.” That little part isn’t comfortable with the fact that, maybe, he is. Or he could be. Man, fuck that part of his brain. That part of his brain can choke.

Except.

Except that that little part of his brain is right.

The night after Eddie got out of the hospital in Derry, he’d told him everything. He’d told him how horrible he felt about everything, how it should have been him that got hurt, not Eddie. He asked if Eddie remembered anything about the week before Richie had left.

“Do I?” Eddie laughed, voice a little dry. He rocked back in the passenger seat of Richie’s car and closed his eyes. “Let’s see, do I remember my first boyfriend bitching at me for holding his hand in my own bedroom? Or are you talking about the massive blow up the next night when you snuck in my window, didn’t talk to me, then made a big scene of leaving without a single word?” He looked out the window and shook his head. “Or are you talking about the next day when you kissed me in the middle of the street on the way home from school, then got pissed when I questioned you? Then, when I chased you up Center Street, trying to get you to tell me what I did, you just looked me dead in the eye, and said ‘Can’t you see that this is over? Don’t you get that?” He nodded, swallowing thickly and trying to force back the tears he really didn’t want to fall. “Yep. Yeah, I remember my first heartbreak, Rich. I even remember when I showed up to try to fix it and your family had fucking moved. Without telling me. So, yeah. I remember it all.” 

Richie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel nervously. “I was trying to make you hate me so it wouldn’t hurt when I left.”

“Oh, I hated you, alright,” he said, thinking about the nights spent sobbing into his pillow. He’d come up with some really creative names for him in those nights. “It didn’t make it hurt less.”

Pulling off to the side of the road, he looked over at him, his heartbreaking all over again. “I’m so sorry, Eds,” he said. When his apology was met with an indifferent scoff, he tried again. “I am. It was wrong on so many different levels. I should have told you. I should have…” he looked down at his lap. “It wouldn’t have mattered because as soon as we hit the town line, I forgot all about it. We would have said we’d try to do the distance thing, that we wouldn’t be like Ben and Bev and you’d have wound up a whole different type of hurt and mad.” He ran his hand over his face and sighed. “I just wish I could undo it.”

Eddie scrunched up his face. “Why? Why are we even having this conversation now?”

“Because we’re all gonna remember each other now,” he said, tears breaking from his eyes. “I want to make sure that the version of me in your head isn’t the seventeen-year-old who was afraid of breaking your heart but did it anyway.”

The car was filled with deafening silence. Despite his annoyance, Eddie couldn’t bring himself to be mad. “Richie,” he sighed, twisting in his seat to face him, “That is a part of the you that lives in my head,” he said calmly. When Richie seemed disheartened, he placed his hand on his thigh. “But it’s only a part, asshole. Do you not realize that you carried me out of that house single-handedly? I would be dead if it weren’t for you.” He shook his head, then added, “And who doesn’t fucking suck at seventeen? It’s part of the fucking teenage handbook. You’re supposed to suck, especially at love and shit. Fuck, we’re forty and still suck at it.” The speed of his speech was picking up rapidly through his thoughts and Richie couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, we, douchebag, because if you’re telling me that you didn’t want to leave me then and looking at me with those goofy sad eyes, I know what you’re getting at and I’d be stupid to lie and say that I didn’t want that, too.”

Richie was glad he’d stopped the car because that statement would have put their lives in jeopardy. “You what?”

“I want you, too, idiot.”

Richie balked. He hadn’t expected that. He just wanted to apologize. Eddie was married. Like,  _ married  _ married. Maybe not married like Stan was married but still, legal papers, wedding rings, nickname type of married. “You do? But what about your m-”

“If you call her my mo-”

He choked down the joke and covered it with a cough. “Myra. Your Myra,” he said, recovering about as smoothly as he could hope. 

Eddie groaned and tried to adjust the seat belt off of his chest. “What about her?” 

That wasn’t the response he’d expected. “So, what? So, you disappear on her, almost die, come back with a whole new set of memories and a boyfriend and your wife is supposed to just be okay with it?” Eddie nodded casually. “That’s a lot to ask anyone to swallow, Eds.” For a moment, he wondered if he should take Eddie back to the hospital. Clearly, there was some sort of head trauma that hadn’t been discussed. “Are you sure about this?”

Apparently, he wasn’t. Their “affair” or whatever the rest of the Losers wanted to call it lasted hardly a couple of weeks before Myra had cried about Richie taking her Eddie away from her. They were on a date, out to dinner and window shopping in the chill of the autumn mist on 5th Avenue when Myra called. Richie had tried to get Eddie to hang up the phone. He felt so guilty, but somehow, Eddie didn’t. He wanted both. 

“Eddie, I can’t-” he said, folding his arms and leaning against the wall, out of the flow of foot traffic. “Should we just head back? She sounded really upset.” He’d forgotten how much he hated the East Coast weather, shivering despite the heat building in his cheeks. “If you need to-”

He leaned up on to his toes and kissed him slowly. “Nope. I’m out with you. I’ll deal with her later.” He kissed him again before pulling him off down the street. They kept on their date like nothing happened. Work, weather, Bill’s new project, Stan’s next visit, where Mike and Ben and Bev were traveling now. It was so incredibly normal. But, the later it got, the closer they got to the point where it would all go back to bizarre.

Richie was grateful that New York paparazzi were a little more respectful than LA because that moment would have been all over TMZ and every rag magazine by morning if they were in LA. “Marred Monologuer Macks Married Man; Tozier Tell-All pg 19.” But here, they were startlingly anonymous. Granted, he thought, if they were in LA, Eddie wouldn’t still be with Myra and things wouldn’t be so gross.

This was gross.

He was gross. 

The further uptown they walked, the more uncomfortable Richie got. How had he let it get this far? It was to the point that his boyfriend would get out of bed, shower, walk down the hall, then go to sleep with his wife. This wasn’t what his big love story was supposed to be. This was something that Richie-from-ten-years-ago would have been okay with. Richie now couldn’t do it anymore.

Approaching the front door of Eddie’s apartment building, because it was Eddie’s place, not theirs, he stopped, pulling him in through the grand double doors and out of sight. “I don’t think I can.” He looked at the elevators, hoping beyond hope that none of Eddie’s neighbors would come downstairs. “This isn’t right.”

“What’s not?” Eddie asked.

Richie gestured a little wildly. “This! Us!” He started to pace. 

Watching him carefully, Eddie folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “So you’re leaving me again?” He looked at the floor, a hundred arguments boiled up inside of him. He wanted to scream. He thought… It didn’t matter what he thought, now.

“No!” Richie said, startling them both. He took a step back, then folded his arms, mirroring Eddie. “Maybe? Just, hear me out here. Look at it from my side. I stayed here with you,” he stepped toward Eddie who, for the first time, maybe ever, didn’t come to meet him. He sighed, then pointed toward the elevator. “You stayed here with your wife. You have a live-in mistress, for fuck’s sake!” He buried his face in his hands. Richie wanted to scream. There had to be something he was missing. “This isn’t you. I don’t know what’s going on, and I’ve asked, but I think,” he stepped away and shook his head. “I think it’s time for you to figure it out.”

“Okay,” Eddie said, chewing on his bottom lip. He knew it was right. But where did that leave him?

Moving toward him, Richie touched Eddie’s arms. Eddie didn’t fight being pulled into a hug. “I don’t want this. You have to know that, right?”

That much was obvious, he supposed. “I do,” he said. He nodded into Richie’s shoulder. He couldn’t bring himself to even argue. He couldn’t bring himself to fight for it, even though Richie was all he wanted. He was just so afraid. 

Weakly, Richie started to try to explain. “I just… I can’t keep doing this. The guilt is eating me alive,” he said.

“Don’t-” Eddie said, pushing himself out of Richie’s arms. “Look. Don’t do that. Okay?” Richie had no reason to feel guilty. Richie was trying his best in a situation that he didn’t ask to be brought into. It wasn’t his fault that he was missing the things that Eddie was actively keeping from him. He walked to the other side of the lobby and leaned back against the wall. Tears welled in his eyes, he pled, “Just say that this is the end. Break up with me, because I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

The silence in the room was suffocating. Richie opened his mouth, then closed it once, then twice. He didn’t want this. This wasn’t fair. But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. “I think we should break up,” he said, voice sounding too calm, too even for what he said.

Eddie nodded. “Okay.”

So, that was it? No argument. No trying to get him to stay. Fuck it, he’d be back in LA before tomorrow. “I’ll go pack my shit.” He didn’t have much to speak of, but that was okay. Easier to condense. 

“Richie-” Eddie said quietly, calling him back as he pressed the elevator’s call button. A million unsaid words caught in his throat. He tugged him back into a hug and pulled him into a desperate kiss.

It would have been so easy to give in. The tears streaming down both of their faces should have been signal enough to them that they didn’t want this. As Eddie deepened the kisses in, digging his hands into Richie’s hair, it sunk in. If they were breaking up, this wasn’t it. “No. Don’t,” he said, pulling away, leaving the shorter man dissolving into tears. Richie, sobbing himself, added, “That’ll only make it harder. Okay. Just let me-” he released himself from his grasp and begged, “Eds, let me go.” He meant in the moment, but he wanted it to mean more. He wanted it to at least sound like he meant in total. It would at least be easier.

The elevator car dinged into position and Richie boarded it alone. Once inside, he broke down. He sobbed loudly and uninhibited. He didn’t even bother to collect himself upon his exit. He went to Eddie’s door and unlocked it. He ignored Myra’s calls from the couch and disappeared up the hall. He threw his clothes into his duffel bag and looked around the room. A couple of pictures, he only took one. His coffee cup, his phone charger. Everything else could stay. It didn’t matter. He had enough of it at his place in LA. He went across the hall into the bedroom Eddie and Myra shared. He thought about taking a sweatshirt, but it wasn’t that type of breakup. He was going to want to drink this all away and having a memento wasn’t going to help.

Without a word, he went back out into the hall and called the elevator to get him again. By the time he got to the lobby, Eddie was sitting on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest. Richie’s heart nearly stopped. 

“This is really what you want?” he asked without even bothering to look up.   
  


“No! I already…” Richie lowered himself to his knees and lowered himself to Eddie’s eye level. “God, no! I don’t want this,” he said incredulously. To even suggest that he thought that, at this point, was devastating, “but it has to happen this way. I can’t be this person.”

Eddie shook his head. “Why not? What did you think was gonna happen?” He thought back to that day in the car and berated himself. It couldn’t have been that easy. “I was gonna give up the life I have here, the pretty damn good life I have here to, what? Run away with you?” He looked up at Richie, who blinked slowly, taken aback by the hostility. He boosted himself from the ground, angry at the entire situation. “Get serious, Rich. For once in your life.”

That was low. Richie felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. He was serious. If there was a single thing in his entire life he was ever serious about, it was that he loved Eddie. Full stop. “You know what, Eds. Yeah, that is sort of what I thought.” He turned for the doors, pulled the handle then stopped. He spun on his heel to face Eddie. “I thought, when you said you wanted me that you actually meant it. I thought that I could be enough for you.”

“Oh, you’re enough alright. You’re too much is what you are,” Eddie groaned.

“God damn it, Eddie. What do you want?” Richie shouted. He didn’t like to shout. He shuffled awkwardly and looked anywhere that wasn’t at Eddie. “You want me to stay here so we can fuck and date like normal and then you can have happy domestic fun times with Myra, who actually cares a lot about you and, for as much as she does resemble your mother, her intentions are not and have apparently never been to smother the life out of you. This isn’t fair to her and it isn’t fair to me.” 

Eddie huffed at that. That was easy for Richie to say. He didn’t know the real Myra. The Myra while Richie was around was better. The Myra with Richie around was nicer. She couldn’t say or do the things that she did because she knew, from the moment that he walked in with his arm protectively around Eddie’s waist, that he wasn’t going to let her say and do those things. He’d never stand for it.

Shoulders slumped forward, Richie couldn’t help but ask, “Aren’t you tired? Like, aren’t you done with all the bullshit yet?”

Without a response for that, it was easier for the conversation to be over. Richie disappeared through the front doors. Eddie watched him go, then headed upstairs. Bracing himself for the storm, he turned the knob to his apartment.

From where Richie sits in the little bar with Mike, he kind of sees where he’s coming from. He’s not sobbing like he was when he came back to LA. He’s not actively trying to drink himself to death. On paper, Steve’s perfect. He couldn’t ask for anything better. “Yeah, thanks. It’s…” Boring. Passionless. Stale. Not right. Instead, he settles on “nice.”

Mike wasn’t born yesterday. Worse, Mike has known Richie too long to accept that as an answer. He can hear the “But…”

“But,” he adds, running a finger around the rim of his glass and slouching back into his chair. “I miss Eddie. So much I can hardly breathe sometimes. And I feel awful.” Mike nods. He remembers how he felt in the time where Bill wasn’t ready to leave Audra, but he and Bill also hadn’t dived headfirst into it. They were still taking their time. Richie shook his head and stared down at the table. “Steve’s so good and I should be happy, but it’s not. I don’t feel the things that I felt with Eddie.”

Carefully, he suggests, “That’s a good thing, maybe.” All the hurt and mess, maybe it was time to put that behind them.

Richie finally manages to look up at his friend. “No. No, I don’t mean-” He gestures idly at the door. “Look, all of the shit that happened in New York… That was timing. That wasn’t either of us. We had gone through some terrible shit and, in an effort to not lose each other, we didn’t give each other time to heal. So, we broke it. But-”

“I see therapy’s treating you well,” Mike says under his breath.

Flipping him off with a smile and not missing a beat, he continues “I think that if something were to happen now, it would be different.” And he does. He doesn’t know why, but he can feel it. If they can manage to figure it out now, it’ll work.

Mike hangs his arm back over his chair and studies him. He has heard both sides of the story over time. “Have you guys talked?” Richie shakes his head. “Not even a little?” Richie continues and drains back the end of his drink. “You know he left her, right?” He won’t bring himself to mention her name, but still, his point comes across.

Eyes wide, Richie has to take a moment to make sure he doesn’t say something unintelligible. “No. No, I didn’t,” is all he can say.

“He’s subletting Bill’s apartment,” he says, referencing the little writer’s retreat he keeps in Brooklyn. Since Mike, he hasn’t needed to escape, so it was sitting there unused. It made sense to let Eddie take over.

Richie is dumbfounded. “Does everyone know about this but me?” he asks, hoping the waitress didn’t get startled by his outburst. She rolled her eyes, so he assumes she’s good.

“As far as I knew, you knew,” Mike says. He knows what Richie’s up to and, as much as he wants to discourage him from following this destructive path, he hopes that that little fire behind Richie’s eyes is right. He sighs and props himself up on his elbows. “He checks in on your stuff as though he’s up to date. Maybe he’s just getting bits from each of us and then filling in the blanks.” 

Nodding along, Richie stops following the conversation closely. Fleeting images play through his mind like a shitty indie romantic drama that sweeps Sundance for some inexplicable reason. The rest of their dinner goes quickly, Richie one foot in, one foot out. Mike knows the signs of a checked-out Richie. He doesn’t want to keep him any longer.

After they get the check, Richie pays and they start heading out to the street. Bill’s townhouse is just around the corner so they walk there and Richie calls an Uber to pick him up from there. Mike watches as he gets into the car. “Richie…”

“Yeah,” he says through the still cracked door.

Mike leans in and takes the door from his hand. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says gently.

Feigning offense, he guffaws, “When have I ever?” He knows what he means, though. He means don’t get hurt again.

The ride to Richie’s house is long, even by LA standards. For the first time, though, Richie is grateful for that. It gives him time to think over just what, exactly, he’s going to do. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about breaking it off with Steve before then. But, this was different. There was no reason, then. Now, there still wasn’t a reason, but there was the possibility of a reason. There was the potential, however slim.

By the time the car pulls into his driveway, he’s made up his mind. 

He walks in and deposits his wallet and keys on the catch-all table by the door. He heads directly back into the study and finds Steve with his feet thrown over the edge of the chair, nose buried in a book. After he’d stayed silent in the doorway long enough, he thought it over one more time. But looking at that chair, and he hated himself for it, all he could think was that it wasn’t right. He should have been grateful to come home to his boyfriend after an emotionally draining conversation. He wasn’t. It was over.

Moving into the room, Richie gives a quiet, “Hey.” 

It’s only then that Steve even realizes that he came home. “Hey, Richie,” he says, closing the book and leaving it on the table beside him. “How was Mike? I got those-” He finally looks up at Richie and all at once it hits him. “What’s wrong?” he asks, giving Richie every opportunity to lie, giving him every opportunity to leave everything the way it is. When he just looks down at his toes, Steve knows. “Oh,” he says sadly, resting his elbows on his thighs. “Did I… Is it something I did?” Richie shakes his head. That’s all the answer he needs. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“No. I mean, it’s…” Richie stammers. It’s more complicated than that and they both know it. ”No, to all of it. You’ve been nothing short of wonderful,” he says, moving to sit on the ottoman in front of him. “I just don’t feel it.”

“It?” Steve asks.

“Anything.”

That stings more than anything else Richie could have said. He doesn’t feel anything? That’s not good. It’s not fair to either of them. No matter what Steve thought he might be feeling, he just pushes it down with a weak, “Oh.”

Richie leans forward and rubs the space above his eyes. “And, I mean, it’s not him. It’s the idea of him, maybe, but just…” He looks up at him sadly. “I don’t want to keep this going any longer and risk hurting you any worse.”

“Can I say something?” Steve asks, polite and cool as ever.

Richie winces. He wishes, for a moment, that Steve would show out. Prove him wrong, or at least give some sort of indication that this is more than a business relationship with nightly fucking. “Of course,” he says. 

“You were broken when you came back to LA,” he says, voice level. “Broken. And now you’re not. You’re back on your feet and you’re thriving,” he says with a smile, reaching his hand out to Richie and placing it on his knee. “You’re doing better than I’ve ever seen you, Rich. I don’t…” He closes his eyes and pushes a blast of air out of his nose. “I don’t want to see you fucked up and stumbling around on some rag mag’s front page, okay. Don’t let him do that to you again.” Shaking his head, he smiles sadly. “I care too much about you for that.”

Care. Care is not what Richie’s been looking for. He wants to be loved. At least now he knows that that’s not here. “Are you… are you gonna be okay?” he asks.

Steve bunches his nose and waves him off as he stands up. “I’m fine. I love a good charity case but they’re no fun anymore when they’re all put back together again,” he says, ruffling Richie’s hair. “Come on, are you gonna help me pack or what?” 

And Richie does. Their break up is about as comfortable as their relationship, which is to say, not, for Richie anyway. It’s awkward, and quiet, and emotionless and he hates it more than if Steve had told him to fuck off and broken a lamp over his head. This is torture.

By the time they get the last of it downstairs and into Steve’s car, Richie leans against it and asks. “Do I need to get a new manager? I mean, do you want me to-”

“No,” he says kindly. “Just a new man.”

Richie is far from shocked by the response. Still, he feels the need to pretend. “Hey.”

“I’m serious,” Steve answers, leaning against the car, swirling his keys around his finger. “I’m a good rebound, but you need to find forever now. If it’s Eddie, just…” he looks up at the sky and shakes his head. “I don’t know. Just, be careful. I will sick Stanley on his ass this time. Man is loyal to a fault,” he laughs. What he doesn’t realize is that all of the losers are that loyal, but to both of them. He’s never even tried to explain that to Steve. “I’ll never understand how I didn’t meet him before you went to Maine,” he adds, getting into the car. 

Richie waves as he watches Steve back down the driveway.

A couple of weeks later, Bill’s book launch is approaching and, before the party, he wants to have a small gathering with just the Losers. In the corner of the private dining room, Richie’s pouring himself a glass of wine when there’s a cheer from behind him. 

Eddie walks in and Bev just about sweeps him off his feet.

Stan sidles up next to Richie who is visibly shaken. “You didn’t say-” he says as quietly as he can.

“I said everyone was coming” Stan clarified. It wasn’t his fault if, in Richie’s mind, Eddie was no longer a part of everyone. 

As is customary when the Losers are all in the same part of the world, they get loud. They get raunchy. It’s all normal. Normal, that is, except that Richie has decided that he’s not sitting at the table, instead choosing to sit on the bar. Stan sits beside him, Patty on his lap. At least that way, he decides, it’s less obvious than Richie’s moping.

Eddie leans across Bill, making a big pantomime out of getting the plate of nachos from the other side of him. “I thought you said he knew I’d be here,” he whispers.

Catching wise of his attempts at subtlety, he laughs and gives him a shove. “He did. We just didn’t tell him,” Bill added, then hung his arm around Eddie’s shoulders, mask slipping as Richie buries himself in Patty’s story. “He’s not stupid. He had to know. Right?"

It’s nice, Eddie thinks, being back with everyone. He’s hated the isolation that his break-up with Richie has caused. Almost as much as he’s hated not being with Richie. Watching him laugh across the room, Patty touching his arm fondly as Stan looks annoyed. He doesn’t like that he’s not a part of that. There are more things, now, that he’s missed out on from Richie’s life. More things Richie’s missed out on in his. 

When Patty catches Bev by the elbow and they excuse themselves to the restroom, Stanley moves over to Bill and nods at Eddie. “Here’s your opening,” he seems to say to him without anyone else knowing. “Don’t fuck it up.”

Without hesitation, he walks over and takes up Stanley’s seat. “So, where’s Steve?” he asks lightly.

“Probably at his apartment,” he lies. “I don’t really know.” That much is true. He looks at Eddie, trying to gauge whether or not he knows that. He tries not to let the butterflies in his stomach carry him away.

Eddie eyes him incredulously. “You don’t know where your boyfriend is?” He knows. Of course, he does, but he wants to hear Richie say it.

“Believe it or not I don’t feel the need to be involved in every aspect of my significant other’s life,” Richie snipes, then immediately regrets it.

Throwing his hands up lightly, he leans back on his stool. “I didn’t-” He sighs. Truthfully, that could have gone worse. “Okay. I guess I deserved that. Are you okay, though? Are things good?”

There’s a moment where he wants to keep his guard up, but it’s Eddie. It would be so easy to just give in to himself. “No. No, actually, I’m not, but I don’t really-” he starts to say, before realizing that that would be a big ol’ lie. “Fuck. If I didn’t want to talk about it, why would I bring it up.” 

It’s strange, Eddie thinks, looking at Richie and not being 100% sure what he’s thinking. They haven’t spoken in months. He shouldn’t know anything at all, but he offers a quiet, sympathetic, “I know you broke up with him.”

Richie gawks at him then glares down at his glass. “I hope Bill enjoys being single because he’s gonna be widowed in a minute.”

Laughing a little, Eddie nods and looks at their friends, who seem to be taking turns watching for any incoming storm clouds. “Yeah, well, Patty might want to keep her husband in check because I don’t love being threatened,” he says.

“Why would Stan have threatened you?” he asks, genuinely confused.

Eddie looks up at him and lets his hand rest flat on the bar, dangerously close to Richie’s thigh. “Because I love you and I’m so fucking stupid that it took losing you again to realize it.” Richie’s looking at him now and he can feel himself heating up to the roots of his hair. He knows that the entire time they were together in New York, he didn’t say he loved Richie, so hearing it so casually now must be a shock. “By the time I got back up to the apartment, I just…” he sighed, clicking his glass against the bar once, then knocks it back, “I packed my shit, too. It kind of took Myra by surprise, because she’d assumed that, by you leaving, she’d won by default?”

Richie feels like he’s only catching certain words. “Won?” he repeats.

It’s shameful, he thinks. The fact that he was trying to hide it all from Richie. “Yeah, with you there, she was calmer. I thought if you knew the truth, you’d have flipped and had it out with her something so I just figured that I could keep the balance.” He stares at a dropped loop in the carpet with vested interest, avoiding Richie. “I could have you and not have her lose it.”

  
“What do you mean?” Richie asks. 

Eddie rested on his elbow and sighs. “What you saw was her patient. That was Myra biding her time and being nice to you so that you’d turn on me.” He purses his lips and flips Bev off for making kissy faces at him. Richie grins but doesn’t move his attention from Eddie. “And I was so afraid that I just let you believe it. It was easier to let myself believe that if we could make it work with you being there that it would just be better and I wouldn’t have to worry about it.” He shakes his head and tries to piece it all together. “I would leave your bed in tears, shower and get myself together, and go to bed with her and she would cry and berate me. And I deserved some of it, especially toward the end, because, you’re right, keeping you and her at the same time wasn’t fair to either of you. But hearing you stick up for her,” he’s not sure when the tears started to fall. “I realized I was fighting a losing battle. So, I stopped. I stopped fighting her and in so doing, I managed to win back those pieces of myself.” Richie watches him, then hesitantly reaches his hand out to close it over his hand. “I’m so sorry, Richie. I’m so sorry I couldn’t bring myself to be honest with you and, right now, I just…” He looks up at the taller man and struggles to find the words. He wants to say that he loves him, but that feels manipulative. He wants to say that he misses him. He wants to say a million things. Instead, he settles on, “I need my best friend back.”

From the table, a voice stammers, “Excuse me? I never left-”

“Shut up, Bill, nobody was talking to you,” he snipes, swinging his arm wide. Realizing that the rest of the Losers have heard all of this, he groans and hops off his stool, tugging Richie with him. They head out of their small private dining room and out onto the largely abandoned back patio.

When they finally stop, he realizes too late that, maybe, he should have warned Richie that he was stopping because his ridiculously long stride carries him crashing into him. Smoothly, he wraps him in a hug instead of stumbling. Eddie missed this. Richie did, too, He presses his face into the top of Eddie’s head and breathes him in. “How do I know…” he steps back, realizing that this might be too much too soon. “Fuck. How do I know that it’s gonna work out this time? Because I have missed you so fucking much and I can’t…” He watches Eddie listen to him rambling and it feels too much like that last night in his apartment lobby. “I don’t think I can do it again.”

“Because I love you.”

There’s no other comment. There’s no other reason. That has to be enough. They fight like cats and dogs. They drive each other crazy. But they love each other more than any two people should ever love another.

Richie can hardly believe his ears. In fact, he doesn’t believe them, just like he didn’t believe it when Eddie said it earlier. “You-”

He nods and steps closer. “Yeah. I love you.” Richie takes the final step, closing the distance between them. Eddie smiles up at him and rocks forward onto his tiptoes. “I’m saying it first this time.” He presses a gentle kiss to Richie’s lips. They both smile. 

Before either of them knows it, they’re in the car together, heading back to Richie’s. Neither knows what to expect, but, all Richie can do is hope beyond hope that they aren’t making a mistake. 

Looking out over the hills, Eddie is floored by it all. “Your house is-” floor to wall glass. Open space on the first floor. He can see the Losers all here, talking through the whole house, making it easy to continue conversations from wherever you are. Throwing things at each other. He wonders how many of those types of occasions he’s missed. 

Richie smiles, hopping up onto the breakfast bar. “Yeah. I like it.” He grabs an apple out of the bowl on the counter and tosses it to Eddie, then takes one for himself.

There’s something familiar about the architecture. Like if he squints, he could put it together. “Me too. Is it-”

Taking a bite out of his apple, Richie laughs, putting on an affected southern drawl. “A Ben Hanscom original? Why, yes it is, thank you for noticing!” He remembers the first time he invited Ben out, he’d picked him up at the airport and Ben had started pointing out different lumber stores and plate glass distributors. The closer they got to his house, he kept pointing out different lots he’d looked at before he settled on his first-ever house in LA. They pulled onto his street and Richie almost had a heart attack when Ben blurted out his street address without so much as a warning. It was bizarre to have someone in his house who knew it better than he did. Like, apparently, there was a basement? He never would have known that if Ben hadn’t kicked the baseboard and the trap door popped up.

Eddie was still floored how many times their lives had come so close to intersecting but never entwined. “That’s funny. How long have you lived here?” he asks.

That, Richie has to think about. “8, almost 9 years.” 

“Wild,” Eddie answers. That was so much time. So much time had been stolen from them. And he’d squandered so much more of it. He shakes out his nerves, embarrassed by the small talk. 

They lapse into silence. It’s comfortable, but it’s still so fucking weird. He hardly spent a minute without him for months, then they broke up and didn’t see each other for months, now Eddie’s here and right in front of him and he looks so perfect in those fucking jeans they bought he bought the last day Richie was in New York and the world’s tightest polo and Richie can hardly stand it. “God, I’m sorry, I’m just so-” Instead of adding the necessary words to make the sentence complete, he makes a string of gibberish and tries to shake out his own nerves. 

Quietly, he walks into Richie’s hands and takes them in his own. “I know. I’m shaking, too.”

“Okay, good,” Richie says, breathing again. “Not, good like you should be shaking. That would be creepy, but good. I'm not the only one who’s nervous. Fuck. Why am I so nervous?” He laughs, pulling Eddie into a tight hug.

Eddie gets it. It makes a ton of sense. “We just left a dinner party together. All of our friends know something’s up considering I haven’t been to a single Loser’s club gathering that you’ve been at in months.” Richie arches his eyebrow and Eddie laughs. “They didn’t know what, but they knew that I had a plan. They had to.”

“And what was that?” Richie asks, obviously interested. He hops off the heads into the quarter of the first floor designated as the living room and tugs him down onto the couch.

Wrapping his leg over Richie’s lap, he smiles, taking Richie’s hand between his own. “To apologize and see if you might give me another chance.” There’s not a question. He tries to make sure that it’s clear that he’s not pushing for an answer.

“Right, right, right, right,” he said quickly, staring off into the distance. 

Eddie lets him ruminate on it before his impatience gets the better of him. He knows Richie’s fucking with him. “Well?” he asks, nearly vibrating in a way he hasn’t since he was fourteen and dared Richie to kiss him, then took off through the barrens at a full sprint when he actually made a move for it. 

Pulling Eddie further into his lap, Richie runs his hands down Eddie’s back. “I’d have to be an idiot if I let the man I love get away again.”

“You love me?” Eddie says, moving closer to him. He smiles teasingly, keeping himself just a breath away from Richie.

Richie pulls him down further, his hands on his neck just below his jaw. “I love you.” He’s said it a thousand times before, but this time feels different. There’s a deeper meaning to it now. Something more sure. Something more final. Like this time, it’s for good.


End file.
